PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 



field has begun his book with the statement 

 that "it would be easy to find a definition 

 of beauty that would give in a few words a 

 telling paraphrase of the word." The last 

 sentence of the same delightful book asserts 

 that "beauty is a pledge of the possible 

 conformity between the soul and nature, 

 and consequently a ground of faith in the 

 supremacy of the good." How well these 

 two dicta run together ! 



Now we shall be doing Professor 

 Santayana an injustice and neglecting our 

 own opportunity at the same time did we 

 not notice that in the body of the book a 

 set definition of beauty is rendered. This 

 is it: Beauty "is value positive, intrinsic, 

 and objectified; or, in less technical lan- 

 guage, beauty is pleasure regarded as the 

 quality of a thing." 



The complete criticism of this definition 

 would involve another book; but with very 

 few words we may fix two important ele- 

 ments — First, "beauty is pleasure," — that 

 is a feeling within the individual human 

 consciousness, not an objective quality in 

 the thing we call beautiful. And the second 

 phrase of the definition comes back to the 

 same point, for beauty is only "regarded 



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